BurmaBoyhttps://burmaboy24.wordpress.com
(Re)Discovering Myself Through ProseSat, 13 May 2017 17:19:43 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/559b18a086e73e926f2f006daf15b580?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngBurmaBoyhttps://burmaboy24.wordpress.com
These Women are Mothers Toohttps://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/these-women-are-mothers-too/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/these-women-are-mothers-too/#respondSat, 13 May 2017 16:48:58 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/?p=269Continue reading These Women are Mothers Too]]>To the woman who’s had a miscarriage, you are a mother.

To the woman who offers the gift of childbirth as a surrogate, you are a mother.

To the woman who was pressured to put her child up for adoption, you are a mother.

To the woman who adopted, and offered your home and your love, you are a mother.

To the woman who lost her child through torture and violence, you are a mother.

To the woman who nursed the child when their mother passed away, you are a mother.

To the woman who’s staying together for the kids, you are a mother.

To the woman who’s left but still cares for the kids, you are a mother.

My blog is not dead! For the past month, I have been just trying to find a consistent place where I can access WordPress without killing my data plan. Virtual life in Burma has been super difficult to maintain but I’ve found a place where I can now humbly continue sharing my experiences here in Burma, and it’s at my Work!!

Yes it’s my first job ever and I’m very excited about that! I’m now the SAT Instructor at the Kaplan branch in my home city of Yangon (it started around March 2016, so you see, we Burmese people are developing!) and they’ve been looking for someone to tutor the SAT and voila! I’ve just recently completed my degree and I’m very eager to see where this part of my life will go. I’m very happy with this job because it will provide me with honest labor and it will be an opportunity for me to share with my experiences and hopefully through my work, I can empower students to think for themselves and for them to experience university life abroad!!

Moving onward, I will now have another sector of my blog now, reflections on teaching! Part of this includes how our language structures are different and how this leads to impediments in learning English (in fancy linguistic terms, this is called ‘transference’), and we can easily see this in differences in grammar and phonology, for example.

I also want to share with you that I’m doing a volunteer research position for Myanmar Women’s Self-Defense Center! The NGO is doing a survey on sexual harassment in my city of Yangon and we’re trying to see how demographic variables, such as age, gender, socioeconomic background, and township (districts in Yangon are named ‘townships’; this is a colonial legacy) affect experiences of sexual harassment (“I have been raped in the past two years” or “Someone has touched me without my consent”) and perceptions of sexual harassment (“I fully understand the difference between rape and consent” or “I am aware that I can say ‘no’ at any point in a sexual encounter”). I think this type of research is very important because we Burmese tend to stigmatize sex, especially if women are participating in the discourse of sex, from the familial level to the cultural, and this survey will set a precedence to encouraging women to talk freely about their experiences.

So long story short, I’m very happy with where I am at this point in life! Cheers everyone!

Best Wishes,

Wunna

]]>https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/my-blog-is-not-dead-updates-in-life/feed/1burmaboy24Relationships in Burma (Part 2)https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/relationships-in-burma-part-2/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/relationships-in-burma-part-2/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2016 10:10:43 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/?p=179Continue reading Relationships in Burma (Part 2)]]>In Part 1 of this series, I started writing about how people engage and perceive relationships in Burma within the young adulthood setting, drawing an example from my own personal life, seeing my brother currently in a relationship. The main point I concluded was that developing trust and a loving bond takes time and every relationship has its pace, we shouldn’t overlook the cultural context which heavily influences how the dynamics of these relationships. Here in Part 2, I will write about the same topic, but from the social circle of adulthood, mainly through examining how the relationship between my parents work and how society perceives them in turn.

Parental Views on Young Adult Dating

I think a proper segue from my previous post to this post is to bring up a convo I had with my mom about how my brother’s dating and surprisingly, for the most part, she approves of the relationship. So as her long as her son has the upper hand, so as long as she sees that her son is in a position of power, she seems happy about it. One particular point I noticed was when my brother started receiving friend requests from other women on Facebook, she told him to be careful because “these types of women are always up to no good”. To all these statements I gave a rebuttal, using the points of my previous blog, though admittedly it was quite watered-down. Then my mom questioned why we’re having an argument, and by implication, why I’m not on my brother’s side. It’s not about picking sides and it’s not about how ‘blood is thicker than water’, because even if I want to stick with this truism (again, I don’t), I would be more inclined on focusing my attention to making sure my brother respects the women he’s seeing. But more fundamentally, this type of discourse presumes that these women are of secondary importance, based on how they relate to my family and myself, and we have to do away with this assumption. We have to recognize the humanity inherent in every individual and yield respect, not only when we see an ongoing relationship, or a potential to be added into the family.

Relationship Dynamics Between Mom and Dad

Having said this, it is now time to the dynamics of marriage (or lack of) between Mom and Dad. A lot of the criteria I’ve mentioned in my previous article still applies, so for example, there’s hardly any trust as the relationship currently stands; they each view relationships as some form of battleground, a field of dominance and subjugation; and finally, we have a total breakdown of communication. They’re still in the same house but they don’t talk to each other directly or at all. Imagine for me how awkward it feels to stay under the same roof and bear witness to this ongoing interaction, or lack of. Honestly, I feel completely helpless at times, but I have come to accept that the marriage isn’t as strong as it used to be, but of course I’d like to know why. I do know there is a mention of an extramarital affair, which Mom explicitly says and which Dad doesn’t deny (though he does deny that I have half-siblings, for now). One of the most interesting aspects of this conversation is that whenever my parents used to fight, Mom would always say that affairs are something people of higher social status simply don’t do. Well, obviously, I hate to sound real cheeky but she would have to either read Anna Karenina or look around her own society more closely to see otherwise. The thing I don’t understand is why she deflects this issue to social status and wealth, rather than gender issues which are considerably far more germane to the issue at hand.

That’s not Mom and Dad. That’s a stock photo. I just wanted to show you how our wedding garments look like

Maybe an honest conversation with each of them separately would help me understand and process this, but I will have to save it for later. For example, I should try to understand what prompted the affair to take place in the first place. It could very well be Dad’s extremely misguided attempts to find romantic love. Nonetheless, as I said before, that’s just speculation so I’ll only write down concrete details as the talks develop. It is extremely taxing on me to breakdown many components which influence every aspect of the relationships I see, and it is even more enervating to enflesh a lot of hidden assumptions and cultural mores lurking underneath.

And Divorce?

Well, then what about the question of divorce? Ha, that’s easy to say, but it’s extremely difficult to enact. Divorced couples are ridiculously stigmatized in my country so that’s not happening. For one, most of the property is signed under the male head of the family, so that would mean Mom would hardly get anything out of it, and I know this is true for material property and capital, but I’m not too sure about children custody (though my brother and I are 23 and 22, respectively). It’s very likely that Mom’s side of the family would file a counter-lawsuit to try to win property back, which also costs money in the first place, and would therefore be ridiculously #scandalous. And even if both parents are willing to subject themselves to stigma, there is hardly any support in terms of therapy, especially emotional abuse (no one talks about mental health issues in Burma or even sees that as a legitimate health issue), hardly any form of support for single-mother families, and so, hardly any notion of reintegrating into society. I think here, once again, cultural values are back at it again, with the prevailing notions of how couples have to “rough it out”, and even then, this discourse places particularly heavy burden on women, who are expected, and even romanticized, to stick through the abuse and stay strong. It’s an impossible burden to bear and once again, we have an idealistic but ultimately myopic view of relationships which, as I said in my last post, neither satisfies or is satisfactory.

Now at this point you’d probably want to ask me about my own relationships. xD I’m not seeing anyone now! I am more than willing to write about perceptions of gay relationships, but that’s a story for another day! (this is the only section of LGBT issues I can speak of with most confidence, seeing as how I am gay myself hahahha)

There is no legalized same-sex marriage in Burma, but this is an engagement ceremony two years ago which made headlines.

Meta-blogging commentary: And as always, thanks a million for being a part of the process in unpacking my thoughts. If you have suggestions about how to make long posts engaging, let me know! I try to include images in my longer posts as it’s always nice to see a cute pop of color and in this post, I started using headers to ‘chunk’ off my posts. But always let me know how to best engage y’all with my content. (Yes I use y’all. The Midwest has rubbed on to me)

-Wunna

]]>https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/relationships-in-burma-part-2/feed/2burmaboy24marriagestockphotocongratulationsgoalsDisenchant (A Thought on Happiness) https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/disenchant-a-thought-on-happiness/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/disenchant-a-thought-on-happiness/#commentsWed, 07 Sep 2016 06:19:19 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/disenchant-a-thought-on-happiness/Continue reading Disenchant (A Thought on Happiness) ]]>Happiness is neither something we defer to the future, or a state of detachment from the real world and its difficulties, nor should it be an idealization of ourselves.

It is when life throws challenges at us, we look right back at life in defiance. It is the resolution that despite our problems, or rather in the face of our problems, we nonetheless strive to remain happy.

Happiness is a dare.

Perhaps disenchantment is life’s greatest of all gifts; only by being disillusioned we can start to be free. This is how we will be happy.

]]>https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/disenchant-a-thought-on-happiness/feed/2burmaboy24Relationships in Burma (Part 1)https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/relationships-in-burma-part-1/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/relationships-in-burma-part-1/#commentsTue, 06 Sep 2016 04:44:21 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/?p=113Continue reading Relationships in Burma (Part 1)]]>In my last posts, I wrote about some of my thoughts on perceptions of skin color in the wider Burmese community. Today, I’ll write about dating and embedded gender roles in relationships, especially in the context of Burmese culture and frame of thinking. Once again, many thanks for stopping by!

I don’t have to go too far to look for relationships today, since I’m going to focus on two, which are both close to home: that between my brother and his girlfriend, and that between my mom and dad.

My brother’s been dating a woman for the past year or so and for the most part, their relationship seems healthy; they go out on dates almost everyday after work and sometimes they bring each other over for home-cooked meals! And voila! Suddenly my brother learned how to cook! Haha. However, there was something that struck my attention though. The other day, one of my friends found out that he was on Tinder (for my readership unfamiliar with Tinder, that’s a dating app. Basically you upload some pictures of yourself and you see other people’s profiles and if you like their profiles you swipe right or otherwise, you swipe left. If the other person has swiped right as well, then you have a match, and you can start chatting through their messaging interface) and my friend called him out on it, and justifiably so because he’s dating someone already and I would presume they are in an exclusive relationship because he told my friend he just wanted to check if his girlfriend’s on Tinder too. Obviously I was struck dumfounded upon hearing this, and part of the reason is because I excepted much better from my own brother, my own blood!

~Illustrations help engage the reader~

For one, I don’t think there’s as much trust and communication between the two of them, and on this aspect, I won’t talk about further because trust is something you develop over time with someone, everyone has their own pace and means of developing trust with one another, and perhaps they’re just taking it slow and steady. Which is completely fine, yet at the same time, to say this is just a trust issue is to overlook a lot of the context underneath. Therefore, I wanted to bring attention to the cultural significations of the act of finding his girlfriend on Tinder. If you have a man telling a woman what (not) to do, what (not) to wear, whom (not) to talk to, then this is considered compassionate, or honorable, or protective, even. But reverse the script and suppose a woman does the exact same actions, then it’s annoying, or controlling, or manipulative. And even though protective sounds like a positive word, it hides its true intention lurking under the guise of being caring because if you think about it, do you know what being protective awfully sounds like, both phonetically and conceptually? Possessive. Subjugating a woman in a relationship is not a sign of prowess, nor a sign of success, and therefore, there’s no reason to see it as something glorious.

This feeds well into the next point I want to make about perceptions of relationships in Burma: that it’s an interplay of the power dynamics between the two parties. It’s controlling someone before they themselves get controlled. It’s making sure one party distinctly has the upper hand. This type of thinking affects not only women, who are negatively stereotyped as whiny, but also men are also told to uphold a false sense of duty, to take care of their girlfriends and to police their behaviors. And finally, if men fail to control their partners, and by if, i mean when, society looks down on these men as weak and incapable. In the end, no one wins because the patriarchal model of relationships, that of dominance and suspicion, was never meant for a loving, trusting mode of interaction; and so we end up with a relationship dynamic which is neither satisfying, nor satisfactory.

A more substantial picture of the contrasts between healthy and unhealthy relationships

Thinking about problems is one thing, but acting on them is another important step because being reflective about my own culture which has shaped my upbringing is not enough. I have to act on addressing issues and to this end, I hope I can talk to my brother someday. His work seems busy as of now and I don’t want to pile on what he would think as “some hipster talk”. In the meantime, I’m happy with where I am because I’ve used this blog entry as a space for me to recollect and refine my thoughts. Afterwards, I’ll have a chat with Koko (this is the affectionate term for elder brothers in Burmese haha) and I’ll let you know how it goes later, how’s that sound?!

Part 2 of this blog entry will concern more about how my mom sees this relationship between my brother and his girlfriend and will also be a place where I see how our cultural context influences the marriage between mom and dad. Thanks a million for tracing along my journey and please, please continue to visit in the future!

All hugs,

Wunna

]]>https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/relationships-in-burma-part-1/feed/2burmaboy24power-wheelpic1.jpgMelanin and Confidence (Part 2)https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/melanin-and-confidence-part-2/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/melanin-and-confidence-part-2/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2016 05:11:39 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/?p=96Continue reading Melanin and Confidence (Part 2)]]>In my first post, I’ve pondered on where our desire for fair skin comes from in Asian societies, which ended on my finding whitening deodorant at the grocery store. Here, I continue on the effects this product has on my culture and I conclude my post with a poem that encapsulates what I said (and also I’m practicing how to write poems!)
This stuff actually exists!

I think this is where the desire for fair skin is most insidious. The question of who looks at my underarm, or who sees it regularly is none other than myself. For example, I see them every time I take a shower, or when I wear a tank top. Contrary to features such as your face, your arms, your legs, which everyone can see, no one really see other parts of your body like your underarm or your genitals. But we have whitening products for these parts of our body! To illustrate, we have anal bleaching, gels to whiten vaginas, and apparently whitening deodorant! And therein lies the problem because at this point we are not just buying whitening products to be desirable; we are policing ourselves because we have internalized that dark is inherently unattractive and we must remedy our own flaws. Through this example, I realize the most poignant aspect of the cosmetics industry: it was never meant to empower us. Through aspirations towards false ideals, (this is exactly what we are referring to when we use the easy catchphrase “unrealistic standards of beauty”) the industry feeds on our negative body image. This is why we have an instilled need to lose weight, or shave body hair (legs, back, pubes), or whiten our skin!

Pointing out something that’s wrong is an important first step, but only a first step. The next thing we need to do is to try to address it. In this case, I guess here is one action step I’m planning to take. If I browse through a beauty product, I’m going to see how it’s advertising itself. Is it meant to empower me, make me feel good about myself? For instance, sunblock will help protect me from skin cancer, and moisturizer will help unclog pores and remove excess dirt and grime. Or does it make me want to think that I dislike myself so greatly I can’t help but buy it? I hope through this exercise I learn more about positive self-talk and unlearn the cultural constructs of beauty, of “white is right”, of “fair and lovely”, that have been embedded in my society and in myself.

-/-

Melanin

My beauty

Fuels on

My self-hatred.

We beautify ourselves

Through our bleach.

We bleach ourselves

Through our erasure.

We erase our selves

To assimilate.

I have to learn

Beauty differs

From self-worth.

If I wait for someone

To tell me I am beautiful,

beauty will consume me whole

And leave me ravenous, ashen.

If I tell myself of my self-worth,

I feed myself forever.

-/-

]]>https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/melanin-and-confidence-part-2/feed/3burmaboy24deoMelanin and Confidence (Part 1)https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/melanin-and-confidence-part-1/
https://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/melanin-and-confidence-part-1/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2016 05:07:57 +0000http://burmaboy24.wordpress.com/?p=24Continue reading Melanin and Confidence (Part 1)]]>The desire for fair skin or the existence of a billion-dollar industry in skin whitening in Asia isn’t new or striking, and this influences every Asian culture, from East Asian societies, like Chinese; to South Asian societies, like Indian; to everyone else in between: Southeast Asian societies, like Burmese (that’s me!). However, it’s only after I return from the US that I realize how much we collectively obsess over fair skin.
Implication is dark is dirty.

I can understand some of the basis of the preference for fair skin. Dark skin is associated with exposure to the sun, which is associated with manual labor, so it’s considered a marker of low-status. So obviously, fair skin represents its converse in society: being able to shelter oneself from the elements, and simply being able to stay indoors. Therefore, skin color is a status symbol, but it is also an indicator of power. Recall that most of Asia and the Middle East were former European colonies. China was split up by the colonizers, swaths of the Middle East, South Asia, and Burma (my country!) were under British rule; and “Indochina” (that’s the patch of land between Burma and China, so it includes Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam) was under French rule. We have lived under European conquest and seen inventions by Europeans, especially in the military front during WWI and WWII, so we associate fair skin with power. Also, since Europeans tend to have fair skin, we associate them with people of higher status, so put another way, cultural imperialism did not cause discrimination based on skin color, but rather amplified existing pre-conceptions. So, when I returned back, I was in for a complete shocker.

The following day after returning home, I decided to check out the local grocery store because I’m out of milk. Then as I pass through the aisles, I come across the cosmetics section and see the usual assortment of moisturizers, shampoos, hair gels, and face whitening lotions. But something else caught my eye as I lulled along: whitening deodorant.

If you ever thought women are the only target of skin whitening ads then I have some news for you.

I may have rolled my eyes at the sight of whitening face-wash or lotion yet I can see why people would buy this. Obviously your face is among the first things people look at when they see you so if you’re feeling that your face has blemishes in any way, such as having dark skin, or concealing birth marks or freckles, then you would be inclined to purchase this product. But what about whitening deodorant?Who looks at my armpits?!?